I call this sub-series “Forgotten writers” for a reason, which is, of course, that these writers have been forgotten. But some, dare I say, were more forgotten than others. Mina Gray is one of these. It has taken significant research to uncover even some basic life information for her. There are no entries for her in any of the usual sources, except AustLit, and the entry there was minimal, despite their having several works listed for her. (It has been somewhat expanded now, due to our providing some specific life details). This post, like most of my recent Forgotten Writers posts, is closely based on the one I posted on AWW.

Mina Gray

The thing about Mina Gray is that she was published across nearly three decades, in some of our more major publications, particularly The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Women’s Weekly, but seems to have received little recognition for this achievement. So, where to start? Given the paucity of information on the internet, the logical place was AWW and our Stories from online archives listings. The 1920s Stories page includes a poem by Mina Gray, born circa 1917. Titled “An Australian Morn”, the poem was published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 November 1929, making Mina Gray 12 years old, if our circa date is correct. It took some digging but I eventually found, via find-a-grave, a gravestone for her at the Glenmorus Memorial Gardens in Albury cemetery. It gave her dates as born 8 May 1917, died 8 March 1997. So, this confirmed her birthdate and authenticated her age for that poem.

I’ll come back to that soon. First, a little more about the research journey. Mina Gray appears again in our 1930s A-L Stories page, with eight poems published between 1930 and 1936. For our 1940s page, our archives creator, Elizabeth Lhuede, had not only added over twenty poems – plus, now, some short stories – but also that her married name was Mrs Alfred Leslie Bingham. In our 1950s page, Elizabeth added that Mina had married Alfred Leslie Bingham in 1954, and that it appeared that she had “previously been engaged to a Captain Anton John Gunnarsson (M.N.) of Sweden in 1943”.

All that’s interesting, but potentially more useful is that the engagement announcement adds some extra information. It starts, “The Engagement is announced of Mina Phyllis Gray, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. Gray, of England and Arncliffe…” So, it suggests that her parents came to Australia from England, and that Mina was probably living in Arncliffe, Sydney, in 1943. Where Mina was born, we don’t know as we haven’t found a birth notice (yet). She was clearly an only daughter, and possibly an only child, but we can’t assume that. What happened to that war-time engagement we don’t know either, because it appears she didn’t marry Captain Anton. She was buried, as I’ve said, in Albury. When did she go there (which presumably she did)?

It does, however, appear that she stopped writing upon her marriage as I can find nothing published under either her married or maiden name, after 1954. Trove did produce one intriguing article published in The Proserpine Herald on 9 April 1054. It explains that “a visitors’ register at a Whitsunday Island Tourist Resort contains a wealth of information which seldom reaches the public” and that Palm Bay Long Island “has such a book, which contains many interesting comments of the beauty of the area”. It continues:

Two more recent visitors to this resort were Mr. and Mrs. Les. Bingham, of Bondi, New South Wales Mr. Bingham is a freelance journalist, and Mrs Bingham, who writes under maiden name, Mina Gray, has had many articles published in various journals and magazines.

The article then shares a poem Mina Gray wrote about the resort in the visitor’s book, followed by some words from her husband. This poem is the last “published” work of hers we’ve found to date. Was this trip their honeymoon – and this poem her writing swansong? Did they have children? Their gravestones don’t indicate so. I don’t know how much more we can find out about her life, though there might be more in Albury’s local historical records.

Whatever, I believe Mina Gray is a mystery worth further investigation, given the length and breadth of her writing career, and its apparent sudden end. What we know so far, besides those life dates I’ve given, is that she was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1929 as a 12-year old, and had around 10 poems published in that paper between then and 1936, when she would have been 19. Then there appears to be a gap in publication of around 8 years until 1944. During this time the war happened and that apparently failed 1943 engagement to Anton Gunnarsson. But, in 1944, she reappears with two short stories in The Australian Women’s Weekly. From here until 1954, when she married and appears to have stopped writing, she had over 40 poems published in The Sydney Morning Herald, and eight or more short stories published, mostly in The Australian Women’s Weekly, but also in The Sun, The World’s News and Western Mail. This is a decent-sized body of work, and from my random sampling, the poems in particular range across issues, and vary in form and style.

For now, though, if we ever think that a writer’s work tells us something about their lives, the poem “The sane” could be enlightening. It was written in January 1954, the year she was married. It is tempting to think that it was written about herself and that its final lines address Les. A love poem perhaps? The poet writes first person, and speaks of hiding her imaginative life “So that they will not turn suspicious eyes”, but ends with:

Although your face too
Smiles at me behind the hood
Of iron conformity, I know
Your eyes have seen the witches in the wood.

You too disdain
The Sane!

On AWW, I posted an excerpt of her short story “Glass lady”, which was published in The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1946. On the surface, it looks like a romantic postwar story about a soldier returning to his wife whose life had moved in different directions. And its conclusion is romantic, as would be expected in a women’s magazine of the time, but there are hints of something more nuanced and complex in the couple’s developing relationship. For this and other reasons, I will return.

Sources

Family Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 1943, p. 6 [Accessed: 27 July 27 2026]
Mina Gray, in AustLit [Last accessed: 4 August 2026]
Mina Gray, “Glass lady“, in The Australian Women’s Weekly, 19 January 1946 [Accessed: 4 August 2026]
Mina Gray, “The sane“, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1954, p. 10 [Accessed: 5 August 2026]
“A tribute to Palm Bay“, The Proserpine Guardian, 9 April 1954, p. 4 [Accessed: 27 July 2026]

Other sources are linked in the article.